Upon leaving the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion after a
powerfully uplifting performance of Beethoven's great
opera, "Fidelio," one is struck by the question, "Why
is this opera so rarely presented?" Or, when it is
presented, why is the setting so often changed
arbitrarily to a different historical era from that
chosen by Beethoven, to a more recent time -- say,
Germany in the 1930-40s, a Soviet gulag or a Central
American dictatorship in the 1960s, or perhaps, to
Gitmo in the Bush years -- in an effort to make its
message "relevant"?

The decision by the Los Angeles Opera to present "Fidelio"
to open its 2007-08 season, and to do so in its original
historic setting, is most commendable. That it was an
outstanding production, with a wonderful orchestra, fine
performers and an excellent chorus, makes it even more
delightful.

The performance in Los Angeles demonstrates why great
classical culture is always relevant, and does not need
"help" from a director, such as a more modern setting, for
the audience to "get it." One could not leave the opera
house in Los Angeles without being profoundly moved by
Beethoven's passionate commitment to one of the most
important universal ideals upon which human civilization
has depended for advancement: the principle of justice,
the achievement of which necessitates the triumph over
fear, sustained by agape, a deep, true love of mankind.

In his heroine, Fidelio/Leonore, Beethoven provides a
beautiful soul who, despite fear and uncertainty, acts
courageously to save her husband Florestan, who has been
unjustly imprisoned. To save him, Leonore must triumph
not only over an evil tyrant, Pizzaro, but must move
those around her, particularly her employer Rocco, the
jailer, to get into a position to save Florestan. The
power of the opera is centered on the unfolding of the
higher nobility of Leonore, who exemplifies those
qualities of the beautiful soul, which Beethoven drew
from his lifelong study of the beloved Poet of Freedom,
Friedrich Schiller.

The Real Leonore

What makes the opera even more compelling is that
Beethoven's Leonore was not a fictional, idealized figure,
but a real life historical figure. While the program
notes produced by most opera companies identify the
story of "Fidelio" as coming from the genre of the
"rescue" stories, which were popular at the time, the
play by Nicolas Bouilly -- from which the libretto for
"Fidelio" was adapted -- was actually the story of
Adrienne Lafayette, the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette,
who had been a hero of the American Revolution.

According to historian Donald Phau ("Fidelio: Beethoven's
Celebration of the American Revolution," in "Campaigner"
magazine, August, 1978) Adrienne went into an Austrian
prison in Olmuetz, to rescue her husband, who was held
there in solitary confinement from 1792 to 1797. He was
imprisoned by the Austrians as part of a secret
arrangement between England, Austria and Prussia, on
orders of British Prime Minister William Pitt (Pizarro).
Adrienne arrived at Olmuetz in October 1795, and remained
there, in the prison with her two daughters, until
Lafayette was freed in September 1797, largely due to the
international pressure catalyzed by Adrienne's heroism.
Among those who sent letters to Austria's Emperor Francis
II seeking his release were U.S. President George
Washington, and the scientist Lazare Carnot, who served
Napoleon, as the architect of his armies.

This story, of the vengeance of Pitt towards Lafayette,
and the courage of his wife in her relentless efforts to
free him, must be seen against the backdrop of the general
turbulence in extended European civilization from the
time of the American Revolution through Napoleon's final
defeat, and the "conservative" balance-of-power imposed by
the British Empire through its diplomatic machinations at
the 1815 Congress of Vienna. It was during this period,
which included within it the French Revolution and its
Jacobin reign of terror, which unleashed bloody chaos and
the Napoleonic Wars, that a grouping of creative geniuses
emerged, with a commitment to bring the ideals of the
American Revolution, with its "Declaration of
Independence" and its republican Constitution, to
Europe.[1]

Among this group were Mozart, Schiller and Beethoven, who
deployed their powers as artists in the classical
tradition to inspire a generation to overcome the brute
force of the landed nobility of Europe, to replace
monarchies with republics, in which aristocratic privilege
would give way to the brotherhood of man. Such is the
subtext of Mozart's brilliant "Marriage of Figaro" and
"The Magic Flute"; of Schiller's dramas, such as his
youthful "The Robbers", followed by his sublime "Don
Carlos", "William Tell", and "The Virgin of Orleans".

Beethoven was inspired by both Mozart and Schiller. He
studied the music of Mozart -- as early as 1792, before he
left Bonn for Vienna, he composed variations for the
pianoforte and violin on Mozart's "Se vuol ballare" from
"Figaro", in which the servant sings of his intention
to thwart the Count in his efforts to have his way with
his fiancé. His lifelong concentration on Schiller's
works was first revealed in a letter from Fischenich to
Schiller's wife Charlotte in 1793, in which he wrote that
Beethoven, "a young man of this place [Bonn] whose musical
talents are universally praised...proposes also to compose
Schiller's `Freude,' and indeed strophe by strophe. I
expect something perfect for as far as I know him he is
wholly devoted to the great and sublime."

(Fischenich, who later became a Municipal Councilor in
Bonn, was right, though it took Beethoven more than thirty
years, until 1823, before he found the appropriate setting
for Schiller's "Freude" -- as the dramatic, soaring final
choral movement in his Ninth Symphony! The idea, for
Beethoven, that "all men on earth become brothers,"
driven by the mission to "endure for the better world," is
central to his -- and Schiller's - conception, that this
is a mission which artists must adopt.)

Schiller and Beethoven

By the time Beethoven moved to Vienna for good in 1793,
Schiller's works had been banned by the secret police of
the Hapsburg Empire. Vienna was essentially under police
state rule, threatened from the west by revolutionary
France, its oligarchs gripped by paranoia, fearful that
the "dangerous" ideas of Schiller and his co-thinkers
might bring down the Empire.

Ludwig von Beethoven

For a time, Beethoven placed his hopes on Napoleon,
believing that he, as the embodiment of the ideals of the
Rights of Man, would sweep through the Hapsburg's lands,
bringing with him an end to the petty tyranny of the lords
and nobles who held sway there. According to the famous
report of Beethoven's friend, Ferdinand Ries, his
admiration for Napoleon was shattered, when he heard in
May 1804, that Napoleon was soon to be crowned Emperor.

"Is he then, too," Beethoven allegedly stormed, "nothing
more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will
trample on all the rights of man and indulge his ambition.
He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant."

This occurred shortly before Beethoven began to work on
his only opera, which was originally named "Leonore."
Living in Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien, which had recently
been placed again under the direction of Mozart's
collaborator, Emanuel Schikaneder -- who wrote the
libretto for "The Magic Flute" -- Beethoven worked with
Joseph Sonnleithner, who was translating
Bouilly's play, "Leonore; ou l'amour conjugal."

Beethoven's revolutionary spirit during this time was
revealed in a note to Sonnleithner, in which he criticized
Baron Braun, the owner of the Theater-an-der-Wien. He
wrote that he knows that Braun "has nothing good to say
about me -- let it be -- I shall never grovel -- my world
is elsewhere."

His world was one which he shared with Schiller, in which
the beauty of art can uplift man, can imbue him with the
courage to overcome his fears. In Schiller's twenty-fifth
letter in his "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,"
he addressed this directly: "Man rises above any natural
terror," he wrote, "as soon as he knows how to mold it,
and transform it into an object of his art."

Schiller's concept, of the transformational power of art,
is directly reflected by Beethoven in an entry in his
"Tagebuch", in which he wrote, "All evil is mysterious...
when viewed alone; it is all the more ordinary the more
one talks about it with others; it is easier to endure
because that which we fear becomes totally known; it
seems as if one has overcome some great evil."

This is the task which Beethoven undertook in composing
"Fidelio", to show that evil, even the great power of a
tyrant such as Pizarro, can be overcome, through the
exemplary courage exhibited by Leonore. The nobility of
the beautiful soul, which shines through in Leonore's
powerful aria following her encounter with Pizarro, is
an example of how man may "rise above any natural
terror." The ultimate triumph over Pizarro at the end is
foreshadowed in this stirring aria:

"I follow my inner desire,
And waver not;
I am strengthened by the duty
Of true married love.
Oh you, for whom I have borne all,
Could I but reach the spot
Where evil cast you into chains,
And bring you sweet comfort!

"I follow my inner desire,
And waver not;
I am strengthened by the duty
Of true married love."

Los Angeles Opera Faithful to Beethoven

The transcendent power of the agape of Leonore was
beautifully evident in the performance by the Los Angeles
Opera. Anja Kampe, who plays Fidelio/Leonore, overcame
some early tightness in her voice to convey the full
power of her love, and the impassioned determination to
succeed in her mission, in the above-mentioned aria.
Klaus Florian Vogt, who appears as Florestan, sang
brilliantly, and the Leonore-Florestan duet following
the vanquishing of Pizarro was transparently delightful.

Eike Wilm Schulte, who plays the evil tyrant Pizarro, was
so convincing in this role that the audience greeted him
at the curtain call with laudatory boos and hisses! Matti
Salminen was a sturdy Rocco, and newcomer Rebekah Camm --
who will sing the role of Pamina in an upcoming
performance of Mozart's "Magic Flute" in Houston --
conveyed, with her full, clear soprano voice, the innocent
naiveté of Rocco's daughter, Marzelline.

Two other elements of the performance were most exciting
to me. First was the excellent work of the Chorus, which
was spectacular both vocally and visually in the haunting
prisoners' chorus, "O welche Lust." The pathos evoked by
their appearance moved the audience in a way which
demonstrates what Schiller meant when he said that, with
true classical drama, the audience leaves the theater as
better people than when they entered.

The second striking feature of the L.A. Opera performance
was the work of the orchestra, especially in its
presentation of the Leonore Overture No. 3, between the
first and second scenes of Act II. This overture, which
was written for the second debut of the opera in 1806, is
an early indication of the extraordinary powers of
orchestration that one associates with Beethoven's later
symphonic works. In its complexity and density of musical
ideas, it exemplifies what Lyndon LaRouche means when he
discusses Beethoven's compositional method as implicitly
one which conforms to "a Riemannian conception of the
characteristics of knowable physical space-time as a
whole." (Lyndon LaRouche, "Music and Statecraft: How Space
Is Organized," EIR, September 5, 2007)

James Conlon conducted with an intensity that was
compelling, yet with a transparency that enabled the
nuances of Beethoven's orchestration to emerge.
Throughout the opera, one was constantly reminded that
the orchestra was not there for mere "accompaniment," but
to provide multiple additional voices to the intricate
counterpoint demanded by Beethoven. I have never seen an
audience respond with such gusto to an overture, giving
Conlon and his orchestra a prolonged standing ovation
following their performance of the Leonore Overture No. 3.

[1]. As part of the turbulence of the period, it should be
noted that the week before the premiere of "Leonore" --
which was later changed to "Fidelio" -- French troops
seized Vienna, and many of them were among the audience
when the opera had its first performance.

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